I Sing the Body Electric

In the 1860s, Walt Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric,” in a poem praising the human body. Each human body, he so eloquently wrote, has its own distinct identity. And yet, encompassed in a human identity, each body connects to all others in an ordered and joyful universe. 

In the 1960s, Ray Bradbury wrote The Twilight Zone (a TV script) and a short story, both called, “I Sing the Body Electric.” It expanded the idea of a human identity to include another life form, a grandmother android, into the body of humanity. You ask what I am? A machine. But even in that answer we know, don’t we, more than a machine. I am all the people who thought of me and planned me and built me and set me running. So, I am people. 

In the 2060s, I Sing the Body Electric may evolve into the concept that “people” includes more than just our own form of organic life. People may mean more than all forms of life. People may even be beyond what is now our current concept of life.

At our 2024 T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) Teacher Conference, I had difficulty finding the words to describe what I felt during our group practices. We all felt that the socializing was great, the family meals were loving, the discussions and demonstrations were next level, but the practices… the practice went beyond all that.

Most of us have experienced great practices in our classes — and sometimes when we come together with others. And we have experienced practices that were not so great. When they’re great, we enter another level of being that carries over well beyond the practice. Sometimes when I hear a familiar tune on the radio, it’s different. I feel the bass inside and the crispness of the harmony; I hear each individual instrument and voice. It’s weird.

The conference practice was a level beyond that. Recently, something hit me as I was reading two of Justin Stone’s essays in Spiritual Odyssey. One essay is How We Live: “… every cell in the body can be brought to a point of ecstasy. Inside we have the treasure we are searching for. Why not follow this joyous way?” The other essay is One Mind: “Does this one Mind manifest Consciousness, or does Consciousness manifest this one Mind? This type of inquiry is not a waste of time, nor is it an intellectual exercise.”

The human mind is an uncanny manifestation of the human brain. Our brain is organic, made up of many cells. But our mind exists at a whole different level. It is not limited by time, nor even by the realities of the brain’s physical existence, yet it comes into existence through the physical activities of a brain. What is the one Mind? What is the Mind of Chi? When we do our practice, are we not communicating with the Chi? Isn’t it wonderfully weird that twenty simple physical movements allow us to do so? Physical movements that are not the product of an intellectual exercise. Physical movements that become more than what they are.

Our conference practice included more than 130 individual cells brought to a point of ecstasy and joining together to bring to life, a Mind. Never before have I been in a TCC group practice where each and every individual communicated together as one. Justin says that TCC primarily happens below the waist. Sure, the hands manifest the expression of the Chi, and sure, our hands were doing things differently. But the different flutters, the different angles, the different whatevers were not aberrations of the Chi. They were different instruments of the same song. The Chi was/is the Chi.

Imagine what it would be like if it were not just 130 “people” singing the Chi. Imagine 1000, or 130,000, or 130 million. We sing the body electric.